Recently, I watched two documentaries that I found quite interesting.
The Fog of War tells the story of Robert McNamara, in particular his experience of the 'cold war' and the Vietnam war; I think every politician should be required to watch it.
It provides several examples of smart men (and Robert McNamara was certainly very intelligent) doing really stupid things ...
Princes of the Yen documents the actions of the Bank of Japan after WW2, until and after the bubble burst in 1990.
I always feel that I don't know enough about Asia and Japan in particular,
however, I disagree with the extrapolations at the end of the documentary; I do not understand central banks as omnipotent manipulators of the world economy.
Perhaps another documentary should be made about the Federal Reserve, from Alan Greenspan to Jay Powell.
I already have a title: "Clowns of the Dollar".
3 comments:
Fog of War ought to be required viewing for leaders and others. Not familiar with the Princes one.
The 'orinces of ...' is based on the book(s) of Richard Werner, who is also seen several times commenting on the BoJ.
He is the 'father' of quantitative easing (he proposed it in the 90s) and the irony is that he was/is highly critical of central banks and now we live in an economy where they have incredible power using quantitative easing to move asset prices up and (only sometimes) down.
McNamara was a very smart guy. I can still hear the sound of his voice coming from the TV from when I was a kid. Smart people are very quick at coming up with rational sounding explanations to resolve cognitive dissonance. That's not always a good thing.
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